Archive for the Stuffed. Category

Mysterious Planet 9 ‘is rogue world snared by our solar system’ and it could hold alien life
Newly discovered Planet 9 may have been captured by our Sun’s gravitational pull
ice planet that is so big it’s tilting our entire solar system may be a rogue world captured by our Sun’s gravitational pull.

Planet 9 is believed to be 15 times larger than Earth and is believed to be responsible for the odd behaviour of planets near to us.
Scientists have suspected that the hypothetical planet is disrupting the orbit of icy objects and could one day destroy Earth.

Although it is invisible to the naked eye, it can be spotted using advanced telescopes.

But now there are claims that the planet is a lone world that got caught up in our solar system – sparking hopes that it could hold alien life.

New Mexico State University said it was likely a “rogue planet” during a news conference.

James Vesper, an undergraduate at the University told the 229th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Grapevine, Texas: “It is very plausible’ that Planet Nine is a captured rogue, a world that cruises through space unattached to a star.”
Mystery planet Nibiru will ‘smash into Earth’ in OCTOBER
Evidence of a Ninth Planet which is 20 times the distance from the Sun as our planet and a year lasts around 10,000 to 20,000 Earth years
The discovery of Planet 9 was hailed as a great feat for science, but came with a fatal warning.

The ice giant could destroy the solar system by causing devastating “death dance”, astronomers have warned.

It could one day hurtle through our solar system, sending planets “pinballing” into outer space or plunging into the Sun.

Dr Dimitri Veras of the Department of Physics said: “The existence of a distant massive planet could fundamentally change the fate of the solar system.
“The fate of the solar system would depend on the mass and orbital properties of Planet Nine, if it exists.”

Luckily for us, humanity has about seven billion years to prepare for this grim eventuality, which will take place when the Sun begins to die.

The Nibiru cataclysm is a supposed disastrous encounter between the Earth and a large planetary object (either a collision or a near-miss) which certain groups believe will take place in the early 21st century. Believers in this doomsday event usually refer to this object as Planet X or Nibiru. The idea that a planet-sized object will collide with or closely pass by Earth in the near future is not supported by any scientific evidence and has been rejected by astronomers and planetary scientists as pseudoscience and an Internet hoax.

The idea was first put forward in 1995 by Nancy Lieder, founder of the website ZetaTalk. Lieder describes herself as a contactee with the ability to receive messages from extraterrestrials from the Zeta Reticuli star system through an implant in her brain. She states that she was chosen to warn mankind that the object would sweep through the inner Solar System in May 2003 (though that date was later postponed) causing Earth to undergo a physical pole shift that would destroy most of humanity. The prediction has subsequently spread beyond Lieder’s website and has been embraced by numerous Internet doomsday groups, most of which linked the event to the 2012 phenomenon. Since 2012, the Nibiru cataclysm has frequently reappeared in the popular media; usually linked to newsmaking astronomical objects such as Comet ISON or Planet Nine. Although the name “Nibiru” is derived from the works of the ancient astronaut writer Zecharia Sitchin and his interpretations of Babylonian and Sumerian mythology, he denied any connection between his work and various claims of a coming apocalypse.

For more than 50 years, we’ve been scanning the skies with king-size antennas, hoping to pick up a radio signal from space that would prove the existence of other technically adept beings. So far, our efforts have found only senseless static – it’s been a long fishing expedition without so much as a nibble.

ALf says that we have just not been looking hard enough or for that matter in the right place. Besides that 50 Earth years is but a trifle in the pink rabbit shaped blancmange that is space time. ALf as we know is 3.5 million Earth years old and he is the youngest of his planets generations. He says his great Uncle Gannss is 356 million Earth years old and still plays shurrump like a 10 million year old. That is Earth years of course.

Shurrump

Shurrump is a game played at night which lasts 10 Earth years on their home planet and is played very fast with two bent drinking straw type bats (Grurrs) one being 30 meters long and the other being 20 Cm long. The game has been known to last the full 10 years and the players are only allowed to use one leg to stand on. The ball (Yaaj) which is made of vaporous Loss floss enzymes is hit from one quadrant to the next quadrant with the larger bat and balanced on the smaller bat. There is a 5 thousand strong set of solo players and whoever get to the pinnacle of Mount Kiis which is at least 79.000 meters high and balances the Ball for two Earth years on the smaller bat without having it knocked from them is deemed the winner.

However, today there are people who believe that someone is tugging on the line. They suggest that the peculiar behavior of a nondescript star 8,000 trillion miles away could be tipping us off to a massive alien construction project.

That’s an exciting prospect, and not entirely fanciful. After all, tens of billions of biology-friendly planets speckle our galaxy. Surely at least some of those worlds house intelligent beings. If not, then Earth is a miracle, an explanation of last resort for science.

The star in question bears the unsentimental name, KIC 8462852, although is more colloquially know as Tabby’s star in a nod to the Yale University astronomer, Tabetha Boyajian, who led the team that discovered its strange behavior. Tabby’s star was observed by Nasa’s Kepler space telescope, and– thanks largely to the work of astronomy enthusiasts – was found to be a very erratic light source.

Over the course of days, this star can dim by more than 20%, something that ordinary stars never do. Then it will brighten, followed by a relapse of darkening weeks or months later. The amount of dimming is variable, and doesn’t occur with the regular cadence that would mark the presence of an orbiting planet.

When this odd behavior was first recognized, several possible explanations were offered by Boyajian’s team. The most favored was the presence of large clouds of dust from disintegrated comets around Tabby’s star. The orbiting detritus would occasionally mask its light.

But a more intriguing explanation was also proffered: perhaps this star shelters a planet boasting a civilization older and more technically adept than our own. And perhaps these advanced beings have embarked on a massive engineering project, building phalanxes of orbiting solar panels to supply the energy needs of their society. This space-borne construction could cause the dimming.

This idea is so appealing, it has convinced some that an alien megastructure not only accounts for this star’s eccentricities, but also constitutes the first credible evidence for extraterrestrials. This thesis was first broached by Pennsylvania State University astronomer Jason Wright, and was quickly picked up by an enthusiastic space media.

However, before alerting the United Federation of Planets, consider the historical record. Just about every time astronomers have found mysterious behavior in the skies, someone has claimed it’s the work of aliens.

In the 1960s, Cambridge astronomers found puzzling radio pulses coming from our galaxy – pulses as regular as the best clocks. They half-seriously suggested that these might be due to LGMs, or Little Green Men. In fact, they were natural signals from dead stars. At about the same time, some Russian astronomers noted erratic radio transmissions from distant galaxies, which they also dared to propose were caused by aliens trying to get in touch. In fact, they were just giant black holes doing their thing.

There are other examples, but the lesson of history is manifest: if you give aliens the credit for strange phenomena, you’re probably wrong.

Still, skepticism shouldn’t yield to cynicism. After all, the premise that someone is out there is supported by many scientists, and no reasonable evidence should be ignored. In the case of Tabby’s star, there are also new clues. A recent analysis of Kepler data by astronomers Ben Montet and Joshua Simon has shown that this object can slowly, and unevenly, fade over the course of just a few years. Again, this is not standard operating practice for stars. It also makes explanations of Tabby’s star based on either pulverized comets or ambitious aliens trickier.

The bottom line is that, at present, we still don’t know what’s going on in this star system. The safe bet, resting on precedent, is that we are witnessing a perfectly natural phenomenon; one that we don’t yet understand but will eventually fathom. The universe has shown itself to be endlessly creative in creating puzzles for our delectation and bafflement.

But there remains the chance that this is, indeed, something other than a work of unthinking Nature. And while the odds against Tabby’s star being a deliberate construction are long, so are the odds that the cosmic ocean is entirely sterile. So we’ll continue to cast our line into its murky depths.

Once again our posts have run away from us we have been here there and everywhere.

We have met a few people and now while its 2016 and has been the anniversary of William MilkShakespeare’s 300 death we are dressed in special Elizabethan clothe Lily made for us they are amazing and we look fab.

The subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is known as NGC 3597. It is the product of a collision between two good-sized galaxies, and is slowly evolving to become a giant elliptical galaxy. This type of galaxy has grown more and more common as the universe has evolved, with initially small galaxies merging and progressively building up into larger galactic structures over time.

NGC 3597 is located approximately 150 million light-years away in the constellation of Crater (The Cup). Astronomers study NGC 3597 to learn more about how elliptical galaxies form — many ellipticals began their lives far earlier in the history of the universe. Older ellipticals are nicknamed “red and dead” by astronomers because these bloated galaxies are not anymore producing new, bluer stars, and are thus packed full of old and redder stellar populations.

Before infirmity sets in, some freshly formed elliptical galaxies experience a final flush of youth, as is the case with NGC 3597. Galaxies smashing together pool their available gas and dust, triggering new rounds of star birth. Some of this material ends up in dense pockets initially called proto-globular clusters, dozens of which festoon NGC 3597. These pockets will go on to collapse and form fully-fledged globular clusters, large spheres that t the centers of galaxies like satellites, packed tightly full of millions of stars.

Tim Peake says aliens are REAL and there’s ‘high chance’ of humans discovering extraterrestrial life
But the Chichester-born spaceman has said that his incredible journey is just one small step in a longer mission which could eventually result in humans discovering life on another planet.
Peake said he was confident scientists would soon crack the “big question” of whether we are alone in the universe.
“There is a high chance we will soon discover there was – or is – life in our solar system,” the 43-year-old told Mirror Online.
“I would be very surprised if there wasn’t life elsewhere in the universe.”
However, the astronaut said he didn’t expect little green men to suddenly pop up from the craters of the Red Planet.
“Single cell life forms might be found on Mars,” he continued.
Tim also suggested extraterrestrial organisms might be found on the moons of Saturn or Jupiter, some of which are thought to hide vast oceans of water.
He said: “Wherever there is water, there is the possibility of life.”

Wow what a busy busy couple of weeks we have had over the Christmas period. Star Wars. Thriller. Sunny Afternoon. Playboy Club. Victoria’s Secret. Art Galleries. Gold Bars. Museums. Out with the Stuart and Old Fart and Ben and the Greek Goddess. Then Christmas with Helen, Lily, Yung Un and his new bird. Kali.

No, it’s not a cozy constellation, but a distant, non-descript star that behaves like a shipboard semaphore, beaming flashes of light into the cosmic darkness that seem random, but may not be.

While the luminous output from everyday stars is relentlessly steady, this one occasionally dips its brightness as much as 20 percent, suggesting either that it is orbited by lumps of dust, rock or other opaque material, or – and hang onto your desk chair – there are residents in this stellar system who have deliberately built hardware of a size and extent big enough to intercept a substantial amount of their sun’s output. In that case, what we’re seeing is the consequence of a massive, alien construction project.

Seriously? Could this star, lovingly named KIC 846 2852 – a fairly ordinary stellar orb roughly half-again as big as our Sun and nearly five times brighter – be home to some advanced society that’s solving its energy crisis by constructing what’s called a Dyson sphere (or more practically, a Dyson swarm): a phalanx of solar panels that orbit their sun, turn oodles of starlight into electricity, and then beam that energy back to the home planet to power their fossil fuel-free lifestyle?

Well, that’s certainly a possibility. The idea of Dyson swarms (first proposed by physicist Freeman Dyson) is appealing enough to have tempted several astronomers to look for them throughout the Galaxy. They’ve done so by searching for the warm glow of infrared light that would waft off the back side of the solar panels. Their task is tricky however, because any dust floating in the space between the planets (and there’s always dust!) would mimic this infrared glow.

But KIC 846 2852 is different, because the evidence suggesting astroengineering is direct – there’s a clear-cut and periodic dimming of the starlight – a much more straightforward observation than trying to tease out a foggy bit of infrared light.

Given this intriguing behavior, shouldn’t we be checking out this star more carefully? Isn’t it possible that this is a home to true cosmic intelligence – not just pond scum in the watery recesses of a nearby world, but technically adept beings who might have something interesting to tell us … or at least spark endless conversation by becoming the first sentience discovered other than our own?

Of course. But history gently prods us to temper our enthusiasm by noting that the explanation for KIC 846 2852’s inconstant glare might be prosaic, rather than profound. This star is one of the 150,000 stellar targets examined by NASA’s Kepler space telescope. It was also one that was vetted in a citizen science campaign that used human eyeballs (as opposed to computer code) to hunt for unusual features. And indeed, what the humans found would likely have escaped notice by the software. The changes in brightness were highly variable and substantial, much as you might expect from a small swarm of moths attacking a street lamp.

The scientists who wrote the paper announcing this behavior gave their own take on what’s going on here – their own explanations for what these “moths” might be. Clumps of dust are a possibility, as is natural variability of the star itself, or even errors in the data processing.

But none of these seem to cut the mustard. The discoverers prefer another explanation: A small star, now visible about 100 billion miles away from KIC 846 2852, recently made a closer pass, and disturbed some outer solar system comets. Much as lifting a rock sends sow bugs scurrying, the gravitational tug of this star could have prodded otherwise inoffensive comets to careen towards the inner regions of the KIC 846 2852 star system, filling it with debris that’s causing the blinking.

That would be interesting, but obviously less exciting than finding a Dyson swarm. Still we must beware: Given our natural inclination to blame aliens for just about all unexplained phenomena on Earth, it’s inevitable we’ll give them credit even when they’re not involved. Pulsars, when first discovered, were dubbed “Little Green Men” by Cambridge astronomers. They turned out to be dead stars. CTA 102 – a quasar discovered in the early 1960s, was seen to change its brightness very quickly, and at least a few Soviet astronomers figured that clever extraterrestrials were sending coded messages to whoever was paying attention. In fact, it turns out that quasars just naturally blink and for reasons that have nothing to do with intelligence.

In addition, KIC 846 2852 is hardly a star system anyone would finger as “most likely to house aliens.” A few thousand degrees hotter than the Sun, this star would bleach the surface of any encircling planet with highly unfriendly ultraviolet light. In addition, it will take only 3 billion years for it to totally exhaust its natal supply of hydrogen fuel. It will die young. Keep in mind that it took 4-1/2 billion years for life on Earth to reach our own, modest technological level.

These are not show-stoppers: Maybe other planets can produce clever critters a lot faster than Earth did, and maybe the inhabitants are born with a number 50 sunblock epidermis.

And more generally, one shouldn’t let healthy skepticism degrade into unattractive pig-headedness, even if in this case the evidence for something revolutionary isn’t terribly promising. You have to follow up. And we are.

Since October 16, the SETI institute has been using its Allen Telescope Array to observe KIC 846 2852 over a wide range of radio frequencies (1 to 10 GHz), looking for any artificial signals. Keep in mind that this star system is relatively far, roughly 1400 light-years away. That’s more distant than the Orion Nebula, and getting there (if you feel the need) would require a 23 million year ride in our fastest rocket. But more to the point, any signals detectable here on Earth would have to be exceptionally powerful.

We’re continuing to analyze the data. In another week, our SETI team will once again observe KIC 846 2852 using some new receivers being affixed to the Allen Array – known as Antonio feeds – that will increase the sensitivity by a factor of two. Check this space.

Meanwhile, consider KIC 846 2852 as something suggestive of cosmic company, but no more than a suggestion.